WordPress 2.2 ( ‘Getz’ ) was released just a few hours ago.

I have installed it on my local PC for testing. The first thing I tested was one of it’s most noticable changes - the inclusion of Widgets.

Widgets?

They’re simply snippets of code that run a specific WordPress function or plugin. So you can choose the List Pages, or List Categories, or Show Search - each of these are widgets, and can be included (with several others) in the sequence that you choose. This helps site designers to quickly design / change their sidebar layout - without any coding knowledge - simply by using drag-and-drop. The widget inclusion is a nice enhancement that will help inexperienced web developers in particular.

I Mentioned ‘Mayhem’

If the web hosts do what they did last time, then people that use WordPress for their product (like I do with RapidNicheWebsites) are in for many support calls.

Why?

Because some web hosts upgrade to the latest version almost immediately - giving customers no option but to create their WordPress blog with the lastest version. Others lag for weeks - even months - so there is no common version in use. And if the theme or set of plugins being used by an inexperienced site developer is not compatible with the version (function or variable names changed in WP 2.1), then they log a support call. Or worse - request a refund.

Sadly the Fantastico script library does not appear to cater for multiple versions of a script. Right now, ideally they should cater for WP 2.0, WP 2.1 and WP 2.2 - but they don’t. So - depending on your hosting, you need a specific theme and set of plugins for the WP version on the server. For template and plugin developers - this just increases the workload - having to create multiple version compatibility. Not surprisingly, not that many are doing this - which leaves the site builder in the lurch.

A Missed Opportunity…

One big disappointment - they haven’t fixed the code ‘cleaning’ in the WYSIWYG editor. If you want to add in a DIV tag - say to fix the position of an image, the DIV tags get modified to P tags. Additional line breaks - which you want at times - are removed when you save - messing up your layout. This is really disappointing - as this basically forces me to use the basic text editor, rather than use the use-friendly WYSIWYG. I think this is such a glaring shortcoming to overlook. The WYSIWYG editor really speeds up entering text - but it doesn’t help if the editor scrambles any custom HTML that you enter in text mode.

Overall - congrats to Matt and his team. They continue to enhance WordPress , and with each release it becomes even more powerful. Just wish they’d fix that damn WYSIWYG bug …